Press Releases

Houston Association of REALTORS® Syndicates Listings to Zillow.com®

HAR becomes the largest consumer facing MLS site to partner in the Zillow® Listings Feed Program

Nov 3, 2008

SEATTLE and HOUSTON, Nov. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Zillow.com and the Houston Association of REALTORS®, a multiple listing service (MLS) with more than 60,000 listings in the greater Houston area, today announced a partnership which enables the MLS to automatically feed all for-sale listings to Zillow.com. The Houston Association of REALTORS® joins the hundreds of partners participating in the Zillow Listings Feed program, which launched in November 2007 and has grown to more than three million live listings today.

Each listing on Zillow from Houston Association of REALTORS® (HAR) includes a description of the property with up to 16 photos and contact information for the listing agent. In addition, each listing links to the HAR Web site, HAR.com, where consumers are able to find further information about the home, neighborhood, listing agent and brokerage.

"We're thrilled to partner with HAR, truly a leader in innovation for their members and sellers," said Spencer Rascoff, Zillow's chief operating officer. "This partnership gives buyers looking for homes in the Houston area a more complete search experience when they visit Zillow, and it gives HAR members and sellers additional free marketing for listings."

Michael Levitin, 2008 HAR chairman, adds, "We are continuously looking for ways to maximize marketing exposure for our members and listings. The Zillow Listings Feed program offers a tremendous marketing opportunity for our agents and their sellers, with additional exposure to Zillow's millions of visitors each month."

The Zillow Listings Feed program allows participating listings brokers and MLSs to showcase their listings on one of the most-visited real estate sites in the country, with 5.4 million unique users in September 2008, two-thirds of whom are buying or selling now or in the near future. Real estate brokerages and MLSs post for-sale listings directly to Zillow.com in a bulk feed. In addition, individual agents can increase their exposure by creating a free profile page with photos, contact information and more details about themselves, linked directly from each listing.

Founded in 1918, the Houston Association of REALTORS® (HAR) is a 26,000-member organization of real estate professionals engaged in every aspect of the industry, including residential and commercial sales and leasing, appraisal, property management and counseling. It is the largest individual membership trade association in Houston, as well as the second largest local association/board of REALTORS® in the United States. Its Web site, HAR.com, is the only local site to regularly rank among the top 25 most frequently visited real estate sites in the country. Every month, more than 1 million unique visitors generate an average of 1.4 billion hits on the site.

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